You’ll die at the smell of this perfume.
The sweet-smelling Tom Ford fragrance Lost Cherry has become a fan favorite, being described by some beauty lovers as a scent that makes them “happy.”
But little do they know — it’s similar to the aroma of cadavers.
Anna Van Burnen, a content creator and senior at Stanford University, revealed online that she had saved up to purchase the $225 fragrance during a trip to Hong Kong — only to learn later through her TikTok feed that it “smelled exactly like embalming fluid.”
“Still heartbroken,” she wrote in the caption of her video. “And smelling like embalming fluid.”
Some people supported the disturbing claims about Lost Cherry — which features notes of black cherry, tonka bean and almond — while others brushed it off.
“When working with cadavers I was always like, ‘Who here is wearing lost cherry?’ and then this happened,” one viewer wrote.
“To me, it smells like those early 2000s cherry lip balms that smelled like cherry but like… in a sinister way… a waxy and incredibly artificial way,” someone else wrote.
“Lost cherry was my wedding perfume and it’s the scent I get the most compliments on,” one person commented. “So I guess a lot of us like the smell of embalming fluid.”
One former mortuary student, however, argued that “it really doesn’t” smell like cadavers, and begged people to “carry on” without a care.
“I mean, if you like it, only a mortician is going to know that,” reasoned another user.
Despite the debate online over whether or not the perfume — referred to as the smell of “sweet cadaver” by some TikTokkers — is an exact match to the aroma of embalming fluid, experts reveal that the fragrance can, in fact, mimic the scent of cadavers due to the ingredient benzaldehyde, which is used in food or fragrances to create an almond or cherry taste or smell.
It is also the same chemical used during the embalming process.
“I’ve smelled this at wakes before for folks who chose to be embalmed,” death doula and author Tree Carr told Dazed of the Lost Cherry perfume.
“I think it smells like marzipan actually, with a slightly spicy undertone. Funeral homes go to great lengths to ensure that any chemical embalming scents are minimized through using benzaldehyde.”
